What the World Looked Like When Game of Thrones Premiered

Has it already been two years since Game of Thrones ended?

Well, technically, it’s been 23 months, the series finale doing what it did on May 19, 2019 (though for so many aggrieved fans the show ended in spirit weeks before then, the twists perpetrated by the series’ creators not living up to what were probably unmeetable expectations in the first place). But anyway…

Whether that heated debate seems like it was raging only yesterday, or if by now it feels as though GOT was in another lifetime, then hold on to your dragon horn because it’s now been 10 years since the series premiered. 

Upon arrival it was well-hyped (especially by existing devotees of George R.R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series), episode one attracting a very respectable 2.2 million viewers. But somewhere between “wait, aren’t they brother and sister?” and Ned Stark losing his head, word of the show’s, er, charms spread like wildfire and ultimately GOT burst out of the shackles of an under-respected genre to become an Emmy-winning, doctoral thesis-inspiring juggernaut, as well as HBO’s most-watched series ever.

And it all started 10 years ago. How does that feel?